ANTHONY BUTLER: The language of ‘just transition’ could become a Tower of Babel

Conflicting interests and interpretations have the potential to threaten the project itself

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

07 JULY 2023

Delay and confusion continue to dog SA’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). The partnership, initially unveiled at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, brought SA together with EU partners, the US and the UK. Expected to provide $8.5bn in loan and grant funding, it was seen as the only mechanism on the table to source international finance to accelerate retirement of coal-fired power plants, reskill carbon sector workers and support coal-dependent regions. 

SA’s development partners viewed the JETP as a cost-effective way to reduce emissions while also encouraging private investment in clean energy, electrification and other green technologies. It was a test case to start filling a significant credibility gap in global energy transition policy, with agreements now being extended to other countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt and India.

Some of the frustration that has emerged over the past two years no doubt results from the mixed messages emanating from different government ministers, Eskom and presidential advisory bodies about the future of coal generation and latterly about the content of the government’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan. 

SA’s character as an open and vigorous democracy has facilitated an unexpectedly strong pushback against rapid decarbonisation. Businesses engaged in the extraction, brokering and trucking of coal are politically powerful and significant contributors to party funds.

While power cuts have negatively affected businesses across SA — notably in the key economic hubs of Gauteng and the Western Cape — the coal lobby is highly motivated and closely linked to leaders of the ANC in Mpumalanga.

The situation is complicated by the unintended consequences of BEE policy. Politicised BEE partnerships, when combined with the desire of established businesses to unburden themselves of toxic environmental legacies, have ensured that the most egregious despoilers of the environment in SA have the best political connections.

Meanwhile, unions such as the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) fear green jobs will be taken by non-unionised labour, a position reflected in the prominent role granted to the union’s former general secretary, energy minister Gwede Mantashe.

Beyond these SA-specific factors, fundamental differences about the meaning of “just transition” have been exposed, and these threaten transition plans around the world. 

First, in much of Europe — and among what Mantashe characterises as “foreign funded” environmental NGOs — just transition is linked to the classical idea of “sustainable development”: the need to meet the needs of the present generation without unfairly compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The new carbon border adjustment mechanism and other measures testify to the growing determination of the EU with regard to generational fairness.

In SA, this notion has been overshadowed by a second, labour-orientated conception of just transition that first emerged in US labour unions in the 1970s. This built on the early idea that a transition “superfund” should be created to provide for affected worker retraining and community support. 

A third prominent “justice” theme, also important in SA, concerns energy poverty, given that a majority of citizens lack electricity that is both accessible and affordable. This obliges too many communities to rely on health-destroying and dangerous household energy sources.

Finally, justice also has a financing dimension, with many of SA’s partners in the Global South emphasising that early industrialisers in the West must pay for just transition and compensate those most affected by climate change. President Cyril Ramaphosa dramatises the scale of necessary transition investments for SA alone at almost $100bn over the next decade.

During international negotiations, a lack of conceptual clarity is sometimes politically expedient. There is a danger, however, that the idea of “just transition” has so many contested and contradictory meanings that frustration and miscommunication will eventually mutate into distrust and intransigence.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town